Acts of Affirmation
by Maddy77
Summary: Martha Jones saved the world alongside Dean Winchester in the Year that Never Was. But she met him, first. A series of one-shots. DW S3; SPN S4
1. Appellation

Author's Note: So the People Have Spoken, and the results of the poll had "Nightmare on Weinbach Avenue" and "As Fell Gallifrey" tied for first. I decided that we'd go in chronological order from the Winchesters' viewpoint, which puts "Nightmare" next, but I realized that I really needed to do some Dean/Martha establishment first before we continue. So this is going to be a series of one-shots about what happened between them that leads up to Martha in "And What Will Never Be". THEN I'll start in on "Nightmare".

We are up to _six_ stories now in this series, and I'm starting to wonder if I don't need to write some kind of "The Road So Far" in case people want to jump in. That would be super hard. But I'll do it if you tell me to.

Enjoy!

* * *

The TARDIS was on course to a new destination, another place Martha Jones had never seen before, another time she hadn't yet been to. Another adventure to be had.

The TARDIS was on course to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the late fall of 2008.

Martha had to admit she was kind of nervous to meet the Winchesters. The Doctor spoke so highly of them, and she knew that the last time he'd seen them, he'd been with Rose. So while they obviously meant a lot to him by themselves, they were also associated with her in his mind, and that always made Martha feel...less than adequate.

The trip over had been full of background information, names and places and cars to remember so she didn't have to get caught up too much when they got to South Dakota. Martha was in the process of wrapping her shin where she'd gotten it sliced running away from the piscine aliens the Doctor had managed to get mad at him, distracting them while the Doctor rewired the weapon they'd planned to destroy a city with. All had turned out well but the cut was pretty deep. Nothing she couldn't handle.

"Are you listening, Martha?" the Doctor asked, perhaps a bit peevishly, and Martha looked up from her bandaging with a raised eyebrow. "I don't think you are."

"Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer, Singer Salvage Yard, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 1967 Chevrolet Impala," she recited dryly while continuing to wrap her leg. "Don't talk about parents or wives, don't ask where they're from, don't talk about the whole blood thing. Don't ask Dean what he's been up to lately. Safest topics are hunting, research, and cars, or let them take the lead with conversation. We're about seven months out from the last time you saw them. Tell me again I wasn't paying attention."

"Last time _they_ saw _me_," the Doctor corrected her, but she could see that he was taken aback and grinned uncharitably at him. "It's been about three months since _I've_ seen _them_. I've been checking in."

"Stalker," Martha muttered, tucking the bandage closed.

"Oi!" the Doctor cried, pulling a lever that made the TARDIS tilt. Martha shrieked in surprise and caught herself on a railing just in time. "Just made sure they were all right. Samuel in particular."

Martha ducked her head to hide a smile at the fondness in the Doctor's voice. Each time he spoke of these Winchester boys, he sounded like a proud dad. Which, she supposed, wasn't the _least_ accurate thing, at least when it came to Sam...but even despite what had happened between Sam and the Doctor, despite how strong that bond obviously was, she could tell that the Doctor didn't care any less about Dean than he did about his brother.

Her smile faded a bit as she thought about Dean. Of course, she hadn't met him yet, but the Doctor told her what had just happened to him, to make sure she didn't unintentionally trigger any bad memories. Hell. Martha had seen a lot of strange things since she started traveling with the Doctor, but the idea that there was really a Hell, really a place of such unadulterated horror, left her a bit shaken. She was a woman of science. A doctor. (Well, almost.) She'd thought Hell was a story, a metaphor. But as always, the Doctor turned all the things she thought she knew on their heads and made her look at them crooked. Made her accept them that way.

The TARDIS lurched one last time, but Martha was hanging on now, and the familiar _vworp, vworp_ of the brakes hummed through the console room. She stood, grimacing slightly at the weight on her injured leg. She felt a hand in hers, and looked up to see the Doctor helping her to her feet. She smiled gratefully and shook her head at the look of abashed concern on his face. "Didn't even notice, did you?"

"I noticed," he lied. "Just trying to distract you." She decided not to call him on it; one look at his face told her that he was almost as anxious as she was about their destination, for whatever reason. So she let him help her up and brushed off the back of her jeans, straightened her jacket, and followed him out the door.

The cold wind hit her instantly, and she shivered a bit as she looked around. It wasn't the most impressive place the Doctor had ever brought her. Junked cars were jammed together in the lot in various states of decay, and the house they'd arrived in front of looked like it had, at one point, been homey, but now looked a bit spooky and in gentle disrepair. She glanced at the Doctor, as if to say, _are you sure this is right?_ He met her eyes and grinned.

She couldn't help but grin back. She never could.

He grabbed her hand and ran up the stairs to the porch, knocking on the door loudly. Martha felt her heart begin to race.

A moment later, the door opened slowly, and the first thing Martha saw was the barrel of a shotgun. Her heart picked up the tempo, but the Doctor just rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically. "Robert, please. You heard the TARDIS."

The door opened the rest of the way and a grizzled older man stood there, his eyes wide with surprise, but his shotgun still pointed at the Doctor. "Doctor?" he said, disbelieving.

"The one and only!" the Doctor said.

"Thank goodness," Martha couldn't help but mutter, and the man's eyes turned to her.

"You're not Rose," he said, and Martha supposed they might as well rip the band-aid off as soon as possible.

"No," she said, stepping forward and holding her hand out. The man (Bobby Singer, she thought, obviously) lowered his gun and took her hand. "I'm Martha Jones. I'm traveling with the Doctor now."

"What happened to Rose?" Bobby asked, giving the Doctor a suspicious look and dropping Martha's hand. "And you know, before that, where the _hell_ have you been?" He lowered his voice as he said, "These boys have been through...well, hell. Literally and figuratively. If there was a time they needed you, it's been the past few months. And, somehow, there hasn't been hide nor hair."

Martha glanced at the Doctor, and he was looking away. "A lot's happened since we last saw each other," he said quietly. "Can we come in? I'd like Martha to meet you and the boys."

Bobby backed up a step, but his eyes were steely as he said, "You listen to me, you alien son of a bitch. I don't care who you are or what you've done before. You hurt those boys, I'll shoot your extraterrestrial ass."

"I'll let you," the Doctor said, his voice soft. Bobby stepped aside to let them pass, and Martha flashed him an uncomfortable smile as she walked past.

The house was far more homey on the inside than on the outside, although it was an odd sort of homey. A few more pentagrams and obscure, eldritch symbols than the average home, but she knew why they were there. She knew that they meant safety, and rest, for a family that rarely saw either of those things. So where they would have once alarmed her, they just made her a little sad.

They had gotten into what was obviously a study when the sound of heavy footsteps down the staircase made her turn. Heavy as they were she knew that it was adults coming downstairs, but the speed and erratic sound of them made it sound like kids coming down to find their presents on Christmas day. She looked to the Doctor, who was grinning like a madman, eyes shining despite Bobby's cold welcome. Even Bobby looked grudgingly gratified, like hearing the excitement from his boys was enough to make him put aside his anger at the Doctor.

The footfalls on the stairs turned into footfalls on the floor, and then two men skidded to a halt in the doorway.

Martha did her best to control her expression, but she was going to have a talk with the Doctor later. He had failed to mention that the Winchesters were _gorgeous_.

"Doctor!" the taller one (Dean was older, she thought, maybe this was Dean?) exclaimed, and his expression melted into a wide smile. Nobody moved for a minute, but then the Doctor threw his arms open and they met each other halfway and embraced each other tight, like long-lost family.

Nope, then. That was Sam.

Which meant that it was Dean still standing in the doorway, looking like he was torn between running to the Doctor like his brother or running away. She saw the tension in his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw.

But his expression softened instantly when Sam said "Dean!", as though he couldn't bear to let his brother see him in conflict. He smiled, and Martha realized she was staring.

"Hey, Doc," Dean said, and walked to them. The Doctor shook his hand, but Martha saw that he didn't understand Dean's reaction to him.

"It's good to see you, Dean," said the Doctor, and Martha knew why his voice was so fervent. She knew this was the first time they'd seen one another since Dean came back. One of the things she wasn't supposed to talk about but couldn't get off her mind.

Dean's response of "You, too" was somehow less than convincing, though, and Martha saw in the pull of the Doctor's eyebrows that he heard it, too.

Sam must not have seen her, because he started in immediately asking the Doctor where he'd been, what he'd been doing—not in an accusatory way like Bobby, but filled with curiosity. Dean, as soon as his handshake with the Doctor had broken, looked around, and his eyes fell on her.

Oh, look at that. They were just _very _green. The Doctor had also failed to mention that.

They stared at each other for a moment, and Martha wiped her palms on her jeans because what if they shook hands and her palms were sweaty? That wouldn't do. Not at all. What sort of first impression was sweaty palms and oh, it seemed that Dean was saying something to her, she should probably listen.

"Dean," he finished, and Martha smiled weakly.

"Yeah," she replied.

There was a moment of silence.

The smile that he broke into was perhaps the best smile she'd ever seen, and when it turned into laughter, she felt her cheeks warm. "Yeah?" Dean echoed. "Weird name."

That broke her out of it, and she wondered if he'd done it on purpose or if that usually flustered girls worse. "Sorry, must be the blood loss from the wound I sustained saving a city on another planet from imminent destruction about an hour ago," she said crisply, and was pleased to see the cockiness fade from his expression as his eyes widened. "I'm Martha. Martha Jones."

"Hi, Martha," he said, and he did hold out his hand, and she did take it, and her hands were dry and her grip firm. "You traveling with that weirdo now?"

"Somebody's got to keep him out of trouble," she replied, smiling.

"Sounds like a full-time job," Dean returned.

"Full time with unpaid overtime," Martha said, and laughed when Dean did.

"If you're done being catty over there, you've got another Winchester to meet," the Doctor interrupted, sounding irritated. That only made Martha and Dean laugh louder.

"C'mon, Yeah, you ought to meet my brother," Dean said, and put a hand on her shoulder to lead her the five feet to the Doctor and Sam.

The look on Sam's face threw Martha off for a moment. There was a sadness to it, and just the slightest tinge of anger, and a conflagration of emotion that shouldn't be present on a face she was seeing for the first time. But it only lasted a moment; he smiled, although it seemed a little forced, and took her hand when she offered it. "Sam," he said. "I know the Doctor calls me Samuel, but everybody else calls me Sam."

"'Cept for me," Dean interjected. "I still get to call you Sammy."

"Sammy's a—" Sam began, only to be cut off by his brother.

"A chubby twelve-year-old," Dean finished. "I just don't see the difference."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Sam," Martha said, before Sam could come back with a retort and the whole thing dissolved into a fraternal spat. "The Doctor speaks very highly of you. Of all of you."

"Well, any friend of the Doctor's is a friend of ours," Dean said, putting his hand on her shoulder again, and despite the _since when?_ look that Sam gave his brother, Martha smiled.

She was pretty sure she'd like South Dakota.


	2. Recuperation

Author's Note: Thanks to everybody for the lovely response: all the favorites, follows, and especially reviews! Here's some flirty hurt fluff, and I wish all my US readers a happy Thanksgiving, and all my other readers an equally happy November 22nd!

* * *

"Take it off."

Dean quirked a smile at her, raising his eyebrows. "Usually a girl's gotta buy me a drink first, but seeing as we're friends and all—"

Martha rolled her eyes so hard Dean was afraid they'd get stuck that way. "You're a pig," she said, but he heard the laugh behind her words. "Take your shirt off so I can take care of that cut before it gets infected."

"Cut makes it sound so dainty," Dean grumbled as he obeyed. He winced as the motion of pulling his shirt off stretched the wound, a deep machete gash across his lower back. He sucked in a breath as the cold air hit it, and heard Martha make a similar noise behind him. "That bad?" he asked.

"Oh, no," Martha said dryly, rummaging already through her first aid kid _(medical supply kit_, he heard her snap in his mind, she was a _medical student_ after all and it wasn't just _first aid_ she could do just about anything short of surgery from it)_,_ "just a scratch. Now lie down and stop saying stupid things."

He stretched out over the towel covering the sofa, wincing again when he felt Martha's cool fingers above the gash. He was used to Sam or Bobby stitching him up, but as long as they had a doctor (a _real_ doctor, not some loony E.T. with a superiority complex) on board, might as well get some quality care, right? But still, her touch, delicate but practiced, was unfamiliar.

As was the swat to the hand he got when he reached for his booze. When he made a noise of complaint, Martha said, her voice crisp and business-like, "Alcohol thins the blood. You're gonna need some serious coagulation to occur and in short order, so no liquor for you."

"But it hurts," Dean whined.

"Then I'll give you some painkillers," Martha shot back. She reached into a bag and pulled out a small bottle of purple pills, knocked three into her hand, and gave them to him. "Take these."

Dean started to reach for the bottle again, but Martha grabbed his wrist and said, "And you _may not_ wash them down with whiskey."

"You're a tyrant," he said before swallowing them.

"I'm your doctor," she replied, digging back into her bag and pulling out what Dean knew to be a suture kit. "Sam, could you get me some soap and hot water?" she called, and Dean heard footsteps heading towards the kitchen as his brother complied.

There was silence for a while, and Martha's hand on Dean's back above the injury. It felt nice, something to focus on other than the searing pain. Her thumb moved gently, soothing, reassuring, and he felt just the smallest bit of the tension he'd been holding since the fight dissipate.

"Did you kill it?" she asked.

Dean turned his head slightly so he could see her. She wasn't looking at him, just studying the wound. "Yeah," he replied. "Yeah. Lopped his head clean off."

Martha's expression didn't change except for an almost imperceptible tug of her lips upwards. "Good," she said.

Under other circumstances he might have been flattered. That she was glad, so fiercely glad, that the thing that hurt him was dead. The sheen of satisfied vengeance in her eyes. But it wasn't other circumstances, and this was Martha, so he twisted as much as he could and before she could protest, he said, "I'm sorry."

"Lie straight," she ordered, and put her hands on his ribs, twisting him around until he was lying properly on the couch. She knelt by him so that he could see her face. "Sorry for what?"

"That you have to do this. You shouldn't have to do this," he said softly.

Martha made a face. "What, stitch people up? Dean, I was in _medical school_. I've put years and an obscene amount of money into learning _how_ to do this. What I'm doing here? This was the _plan_."

"Not that," Dean said. "This. All of this. This life."

Martha sighed and settled with her back against the couch, hands folded in her lap. Dean watched her profile, the flick of her warm brown eyes across the room, the physical symbol of her thoughtfulness, her search for the right words. He rested his cheek against his arms, content to just watch her until she had something to say.

Damn, you dig into a guy's back good enough and he can't even protest chick-flick thoughts like that? He was losing his touch.

"You're just _remarkably_ stupid sometimes," Martha sighed, and well, that wasn't quite what Dean was expecting.

He tried a couple of responses, but nothing seemed terribly willing to be said, so he settled on, "Huh?"

"You're an idiot," Martha said more plainly. "Nobody forced me into this, Dean. And saying you're _sorry_ for it, like you did it to me, is frankly a little insulting."

Dean blinked, which was the most eloquence he was going to manage right now.

"I know a martyr complex when I see one," she continued, getting up on her knees and going back to examining his back. "I mean, I do travel with the Doctor. And maybe it makes you feel better, in which case, by all means, be sorry. But don't pretend that I didn't choose this _long_ before I met you. I was a medical student. I had my life planned, and it was safe and happy. And then the Doctor showed up, and said, wanna travel the cosmos instead? Lots of danger, no insurance, might not make it back home."

Dean saw Sam come into the room with a bowl full of steaming water, some antibacterial soap, a rag, and a sheepish look on his face like he knew he was interrupting. So instead of saving him from this conversation, the little bitch silently handed the stuff to Martha, shot Dean an apologetic look, and scurried out.

"Coward!" Dean shouted after him.

Martha chuckled, and Dean heard the quiet sound of her dipping the rag into the warm water. He braced himself.

"Relax," Martha said quietly. "It'll hurt more if you're tense."

"Yeah, well, I know what this is gonna feel like, and also this conversation's not helping," he muttered, but did his best to obey.

He sucked in a breath when he felt a sudden warmth on his back, but rather than cleaning the wound Martha just laid the rag over his back. "Relax," she said again, and Dean felt his muscles unclench slowly under the heat of it.

Relaxing wasn't something he did around just anybody. A part of him wondered if she realized that.

Her hand pressed the warm rag onto his back, holding it gently above the wound. Her voice was soft as she said, "When I realized what had happened to my hospital, I didn't panic. I knew in that moment that everything was about to be different, and I said yes to it. To adventure and danger and maybe dying young, I don't know yet. But the Doctor gave me the option, and he trusted me with the answer. I'm asking you to do the same."

Dean shut his eyes tight and pressed his forehead against his arm. "If you get hurt because of me—"

"Then it'll be because I said yes before I ever knew there was a Dean Winchester," Martha interrupted. "Not everything is about you, Dean. The Doctor offered me adventure. I accepted it. We both ended up in his world, you got your stupid self hurt, and I'm a doctor so I'm going to do my job and fix you. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Dean muttered.

Then he yelped as the burn of soap hit his back, and he was pressed down by Martha's free hand. "Stay still," she said through gritted teeth. "I've got to get this clean. Ouch, Dean, stop flailing!"

"'M not _flailing_," Dean snapped, full of injured pride.

"Then stop...waving your limbs about in the manliest of fashions," Martha amended, her tone acidic above the poorly-disguised amusement. "You're impossible."

"I've been told," Dean replied, then settled down and did his best to really relax as Martha cleaned the wound.

Her stitches were quick and precise, smaller than Bobby's or Sam's, and they hurt less, too. Or maybe that was the painkillers. Good painkillers were hard to come by in Hunting life, and he knew she hadn't given him anything strong, but it was certainly enough to calm him down and take the edge off of everything. Wasn't quite enough to take the edge off of the jolt that went through him when Martha ran her hand along the stitched-up wound, though, and he jumped a little.

"Oh, careful!" Martha cried, dismayed. "You'll pull a stitch and I _just_ finished. Sorry. Didn't realize you were ticklish."

Ticklish. Yeah.

"Just sensitive right now, I guess," said Dean.

"Feel any better?" Martha asked, and when Dean tried to stretch a bit to answer her question better, she put a hand between his shoulder blades. "Stop. Just...now. Resting. Does it feel better?"

"You did drug me," Dean pointed out.

"Take that as a yes then," Martha retorted, and dropped the rag into the bowl of now-cooling water. One more dig into her bag resulted in gauze and bandages, and she carefully wrapped the sutured area, tight and neat and clean. "There. Good as new sooner than you know."

She stood up from the couch and gathered her supplies. She was bending down to grab the bowl when Dean reached out and grabbed her hand. She startled, looking over at him with wide eyes.

"Thanks," he said. Her surprise smoothed away into a little smile. "I do feel better. Thanks for taking care of me."

She crouched by him and slipped her hand out of his, resting it against his cheek instead. "You're very welcome," she replied. "Next time, don't make so much work for me. All right?"

"I'll do what I can," he said.

Martha smiled wider, her nose and the corners of her eyes crinkling a little bit, and then the weight of her hand was gone and she picked up the bowl and went to put everything away.

Dean realized he missed the weight of her hand, and he wondered if it was the drugs talking.

But he kind of thought it wasn't.


	3. Confrontation

Author's Note: I promise these won't all be shorts about Dean being hurt and Martha patching him up, but I couldn't get this idea out of my head.

Most of these stories will be placed roughly within seasons four or five of SPN, but this one is very specifically one week after the events of "On The Head Of A Pin".

* * *

The last seizure had passed quietly, and Martha was pretty sure it was just an aftershock.

Dean was sleeping on the couch, hooked up to a portable heart rate and brainwave monitor that the Doctor had in the storage room on the TARDIS, and the rhythmic _beep, beep, beep_ of it was starting to calm Martha down. His head was resting on her thighs, and she knew he was out of it because he didn't even flinch when she examined the cuts on his head.

They'd been on Chavic Five when the Doctor had checked his psychic paper. They'd discovered quickly that Sam had pretty much a direct line to the Doctor through the paper; he called it prayer, the Doctor called it a transtemporal biopsychic link, Martha called it convenient and didn't question it. It let them know when something was happening back on Earth, at least on the Winchesters' time line. It meant they'd always go back, and so Martha wasn't going to complain.

Just, sometimes, she wished that they'd call with something less than terrible news. It was giving her a complex with the psychic paper.

_It was the winding-down segment of an adventure, where the day had been saved and injuries had been taken care of and it was time to just take a look at the planet they'd helped. They were in a bustling marketplace, filled to the brim with strange trinkets and foods in colors Martha wasn't sure she was comfortable ingesting and a cacophony of voices and vehicles._

_Martha went up to one booth and held up a necklace, wrapping it around her throat. "D'you like it?" she asked the Doctor. "I think it suits my eyes!"_

_The Doctor flushed, a bright red. "Um, Martha, I, ah..."_

_Martha craned her neck to try to see it in a mirror. "What?" she asked. "Too gaudy?"_

_The Doctor walked briskly up to her and took it away from her, putting it gently back down on the velvet it had been sitting on. "Hey!" Martha protested._

_He took her by the elbow and led her away from the stall, and it was only then that she realized she was being stared at by pretty much everybody else in the vicinity. She looked up at the Doctor, whose face had returned to its normal color and was now looking like it was all he could do not to bust out laughing at her. "That necklace is a part of the Chavic mating ritual," he explained, and Martha's mouth opened in a shocked 'o'. "But it did complement your eyes nicely," he added, and Martha smacked his arm._

_"Could've mentioned that necklaces were a dodgy operation _before_ we got to the market," Martha grumbled as the Doctor reached into his bottomless pockets and pulled out his psychic paper. She wondered briefly how, given their dimensionally transcendental nature, he ever found anything in there. "In fact, maybe it can be a rule now that you let me know early on if there's any sort of...mating paraphernalia that I should avoid on the planet in case we—"_

_She broke off at the sudden change in the Doctor's expression as he read the paper. "Doctor?" she said. "Doctor, what's wrong?"_

_He handed her the paper wordlessly and took off towards the TARDIS, Martha hot on his heels, reading the paper as her heart sank down into her stomach._

Doctor,_ the paper read,_ it's Dean. He's alive, but something's happened, and we need you and Martha. Dean needs you and Martha. Please, it's bad.

_Martha passed the Doctor as she ran to the TARDIS._

Seizures as a delayed result of head trauma weren't unheard of, but it hadn't happened to Dean before—according to Sam, at least, but she knew that even if it had, Dean would've hidden it from his brother if he was possibly able to. And Dean hadn't been very forthcoming, when he was responding to her at all.

She didn't really know what had happened. Sam had been reticent, but she'd managed to figure out that somehow about a week ago the demon who'd tortured Dean back in Hell had made it topside, and he'd gotten his hands on Dean again, and that it was the angels' fault. She didn't know how, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was stabilizing Dean.

And now that he was asleep, stewing over it was a little important, too.

She ran her fingers through his short, sweat-drenched hair, a smile fluttering tentatively over her lips when he leaned into the touch. He was so pale, and the scabs that dotted his head told her he'd looked a lot worse a few days ago. Whatever that demon had done to him, it had been bad. Why hadn't Sam called them earlier?

She was in the process of leaning over to click through the various read-outs on the monitor when she heard a soft sound from the other side of the room, and felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She looked over slowly, cautiously, not wanting to jostle Dean, despite the fact that she was sure her pounding heart, so close to his ear, would wake him.

At the other end of the room stood a deeply shadowed figure. A man, or a man-shaped thing; from knowing how tall the shelves were, she could guess that he was just about Dean's height, maybe a little shorter. Smaller, though, drowning in the tan trench coat he was wearing.

Wait.

Her eyes followed him as he came closer, his gaze shifting between her and Dean the whole way, and when he was standing close enough that she didn't have to raise her voice, she said, "Castiel, right?"

He glanced at her, assessing, and said, "Yes. And you are Martha Jones."

"Heard you did this," she said by way of reply, nodding down towards Dean's sleeping form, because there was no need to confirm what he'd said. He knew. Angel and all, he knew who she was.

Castiel's brow furrowed. "Alastair injured him," he said. "He broke out of the devil's trap we constructed. We intended for Dean to gain information from Alastair. We had no desire to see him hurt."

Martha focused very hard for a moment on wiping Dean's forehead with the cuff of her sweater sleeve, because she knew it was a monumentally stupid idea to get in a fight with an angel, but that's the way she was headed. She knew what _gain information_ meant, when applied to Dean. She knew, then, why he had been so reluctant to meet her eyes while she was examining him, trying to figure out why he'd had a seizure. She was always good at reading people, at figuring them out, and she knew Dean. She knew what that would cost him.

"I was under the impression that the doctors at the hospital had healed him," Castiel was saying, and if Martha wasn't imagining it he sounded a little guilty, a little frightened.

Well, _good_.

"Seizures can occur as much as a month after severe head trauma," she said tightly. "And from what Sam said, and from what I could force out of Dean, he was thrown around pretty good. You know, you're lucky your little stunt didn't land him in a chair, or brain-dead, or both." She kept her eyes on Dean as she spoke, because she couldn't look at Castiel without doing something regrettable.

This was Castiel? This was the angel that Dean spoke of with such an odd combination of irritation, trepidation, and awe? And he'd sent Dean, who didn't trust him, precisely, but who _owed_ him, to do something so awful. To pick up a knife again, after everything.

"You have stabilized him," Castiel said, and it wasn't quite a question but it wasn't entirely _not_ a question either, and Martha finally looked up at him, her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed into a thin line. He wasn't cowed, probably didn't quite know how to interpret her expression. Dean said he wasn't "too good with the human stuff", after all.

"I did," she said. "Can't say it won't happen again, but I have some anti-convulsants for him, and I've managed to get the swelling down. Is there something you want? Because I don't want to wake him."

Castiel said nothing for a long moment, just studied Dean, his expression unreadable. Martha kind of hoped somebody would come in, the Doctor or Sam or Bobby, but she figured that if Castiel didn't want anybody to know he was here, they wouldn't. So she curled herself in a little around Dean, as though to protect him, and Castiel murmured, "You are an anomaly, Martha."

Suddenly Dean's hair became fascinating again, and Martha looked down, running her fingers through it. A tiny sigh from Dean made her breath catch. "I don't know if that's supposed to be a compliment," she replied.

"We accounted for Sam, and Bobby," Castiel continued. "Apart from the two of them, though, we were unaware of anyone else...significant...in Dean's life."

Martha scoffed. "Taking Dean's word on his self-worth a little too much to heart?" she asked. "He might think nobody cares about him, but he's wrong."

"That's not what I meant," said Castiel, and there was just a trace of something human...something like irritation, or frustration, in his voice. "You're drenched in artron energy. An associate of the Doctor, I have no doubt. You flicker in and out of Dean's life, but you've managed to make your way into his trust so quickly. We...were not expecting you."

"I'm just a surprise all around," Martha bit out. "Is there a threat attached to this, or are we just wasting time?"

Castiel bristled. "The angels do not threaten, Martha Jones."

"Then are you gonna _smite_ me, or are we wasting time? Because my patient needs his sleep and you're disturbing him."

There was a pause, and then, his blue eyes narrowed, Castiel said, "I see why he likes you. You are very similar."

"_That_ I'll take as a compliment." Without thought her hand laid itself along the line of Dean's cheek, eliciting another sigh. She and Castiel both looked down at him, and Martha felt her lips curve up into a smile. Sounds of comfort, of relief, were like music to her, like confirmation that she'd done her job adequately.

When she looked up, the smile faded into surprise at the expression on Castiel's face. He was still looking at Dean, but there was a...a sort of conflicted tenderness in that look. He looked up, and their eyes met, and this time Martha didn't glare or try to find something sarcastic to say. She just waited.

Finally Castiel sighed—he _sighed—_and he said, "I didn't come here to threaten you, Martha. I came here to...to warn you."

Martha stilled, her eyes widening just a bit. "Warn me about what?" she asked.

Castiel took a long time to answer, and the war on his face was barely visible, but all the more intense for that fact. His voice was so soft as to almost be inaudible as he finally said, "You are an anomaly, Martha. And Dean has a destiny. It is written, and you are not a part of the prophecy. My brothers...many are literalists."

Martha let out a slow, tremulous breath, trying to steady her heartbeat, because the only thing she knew was that she had no idea how difficult it was for Castiel to do what he was doing. Dean had described him as this unyielding force, this hammer, although he'd said it in cruder terms (it's possible that _like some kind of douchey robocop but not in a cool way_ was uttered at one point), but Martha saw something alarmingly close to doubt in his eyes. And he was warning her about the other angels—warning her, which was just a step away from taking her side.

So she said, "Thank you."

He nodded once, sharply, and glanced back down at Dean. "He will recover?" he asked.

Martha nodded, too. "I'll make sure of it," she promised.

She blinked, and Castiel was gone. Dean stirred when she jumped at the angel's disappearance, his green eyes blinking slowly open and focusing on her with no small effort. "Martha?" he murmured.

"Hey," she whispered, smoothing his hair back, though it was far too short to fall into his eyes. "How're you feeling?"

"Was somebody here?" he asked, ignoring her question, his expression starting to turn panicked as his deeply ingrained training started to process that there'd been an intruder while he was asleep, vulnerable.

"Nope," Martha lied easily. "Must've been a dream. Close your eyes."

Dean did as she said, and it was a testament to how out of it he still was that he rolled over and snuggled (and oh _god_, the horror in his eyes if he were to hear her refer to it that way) closer to her, the back of his head pressing against her stomach.

Destiny. The way Castiel said _destiny_ sounded a lot like the way the Doctor said _time_, and if she'd learned anything so far in her travels with the Doctor, it was that time could be re-written.

If time could be re-written, if she and the Doctor could thwart the plans of alien races far more advanced than she'd ever dreamed possible, then some little prophecy wasn't going to stop them. Seemed like prophecies were made to be broken.

_It is written_, Castiel had said.

Well, Martha hoped Heaven was stocked up on White-Out, because she had no plans of going _anywhere_.

Not while Dean slept so peacefully on her lap.


	4. Osculation

Author's Note: Just a baby one-shot, but they didn't have much to say. Points if you know what the name of the chapter means. :)

* * *

The rain was beating down around them, far too acidic for safety, but the switch was across an open swath, taunting them from underneath the safety of another cave mouth.

"I'm gonna make a run for it," Martha announced.

Dean grabbed her by the elbow. "No way," he said, sounding shocked. "You nuts? You'll bake!"

"Acid doesn't bake," Martha replied.

"Then you'll melt, whatever," Dean snapped, his scowl clearly communicating his displeasure. "No way am I letting you go."

Martha took a step back, and Dean just extended his reach so he could keep his hand on her arm. "Two things," Martha said. "First. We _have_ to get to that switch or the Doctor and Sam won't be able to get the TARDIS back online. If they don't do that then we're stuck on this planet _forever_. Second. You don't get to tell me what to do."

Dean groaned, rolling his eyes. "Martha, come on—"

"No, Dean," she said, "_you_ come on. We've got one shot, and the rain's not gonna stop. It won't kill me before I get there."

"Then I'll go," he said, and his grip on her became her grip on him as he took a step towards the mouth of the cave.

"I'm faster," she argued. "I'll have a better shot at getting across."

"I'm fast," Dean returned.

"I know more about alien technology and I'm likelier to figure out how to disable the field," Martha said, and her voice sounded like _checkmate_.

"I'm not letting you," Dean said again.

"Well, I'm not asking your permission," Martha retorted.

And then Dean was gone from her, but not toward the switch, toward the wall where he slammed his fist against the rock so hard that Martha winced. "Martha, I swear to God, I've never met anybody so freaking _difficult_ in my _life_," he growled, gravel entering his voice in frustration and fear and hurt.

And Martha came back with, "Anybody who didn't have the same last name as you, anyway."

Dean's surprised laughter echoed around the cave, filling Martha with a pleased warmth that almost counteracted the chill of the air around them. He came back to her, then, his hands on her elbows and his eyes off to the side. "I don't want you to go out there," he said softly.

"I don't especially want to, either," Martha said, "but somebody's got to and that somebody is me. You do this all the time, Dean. Let somebody else do it, just once."

"You don't want something to patch up for me when we get home?" he asked, and he was trying so hard to sound casual, jovial, but it only sounded desperate.

So she ran a hand through his hair, like she had so many times when she was checking for fever or concussion, and she smiled. "Maybe you'll have to take care of me when we get home," she replied.

"Sammy'll tell you, I'm a lousy nurse," Dean said, putting his hand over hers in his hair. "I'm crap with stitches and I'm mean when I pop a dislocated joint back in place."

"Mean's the only way to handle dislocated joints," Martha said. "And stitches are hard when your hands are so big. You need dainty girl hands for good stitches."

"Which is why _I_ should go flip the switch so you can stitch me up when it's done," he said while his thumb moved over her hand. She wondered if he even realized he was doing it, because the smirk on his face didn't change.

Martha shook her head, biting back a laugh. "You know, anti-inflammatories and field sutures aren't exactly my idea of an ideal date," she said, her voice flippant, but when Dean's expression shifted from joking to stunned she faltered. "Dean?"

"Date?" he echoed, and he sounded so much like a floundering twelve-year-old just discovering girls for the first time that if he hadn't looked so fragile, so close to breaking, Martha would have laughed.

Martha's hand fell from his hair to his face, and her other hand joined it, cupping his face between them and tilting it down to look at her. "Date," she confirmed. "It's what happens when two people like each other. And I know we've been a bit busy running for our lives to really have time to catch a movie and dinner, but maybe when we get back home, we can find the time."

His eyes were large and round and just awfully green as they searched her face, like he was trying to memorize it _just in case_. "You'd like that?" he asked.

"Wouldn't you?" Martha asked back, suddenly hesitant.

He reached up and put the side of a finger under her chin, tipping her head at to get a better view of her, looking lost. So she tried again. "Dean? Would you?"

The finger under her chin shifted into a trembling palm against her cheek, and he just nodded wordlessly.

Martha smiled, feeling her face shift under his hand, and saw him tremulously imitate her smile. She slid her hands behind his ears and, acting on nothing but instinct, not allowing herself to think beforehand, she pulled him down into a kiss.

The acid rain pelted the ground behind them, and the thunder of an alien atmosphere shook them, but for just a moment, there was nothing else in the world but each other.

The kiss was rash, chaste, and over quickly, but it left both of them breathless as teenagers. When they pulled away almost in tandem, they stared with wide eyes at one another for a long moment.

Martha broke the silence. "I should go flip that switch," she said, still catching her breath.

"Yeah," Dean said, a clear sign of how out of it he was.

"And then we'll go home," she continued.

"And try that again," Dean offered, and Martha grinned drunkenly.

"I'm all right with that," she said, and started off towards the mouth of the cave.

She stopped when she felt Dean's fingers close around her wrist, and she turned with every intent to argue, but he just took his jacket off and laid it over her head. "Don't you die on me," he said, and a catch in his voice belied his flippant tone. "Not after that."

"No plans on it," Martha replied, holding the jacket over her. "I've got to see if you're as lousy a nurse as you say you are."

"It's a date," Dean said.

"A date," Martha echoed, smiling.

She ran off into the acid rain and Dean forced himself to watch her, no matter what.

And when they were all aboard the TARDIS together, having saved the day once again, Dean knelt by Martha in the infirmary, carefully tending to her burns, few and far between though they were. (She was fast, as she'd said, and his jacket had taken the brunt of it.)

As he ran a gentle finger over a spot on her cheekbone, she smiled up at him, tired but invigorated as always after an adventure. "You're not half bad at this, Winchester," she said.

He snorted, dipping his hand back into the tub of ointment.

When he looked back up to apply it to her nose, he saw her gazing at him in a tender, sort of hazy way. "Told you I wouldn't die," she said. "I promised."

"We do have a date, after all," Dean replied softly as he painted the bridge of her nose.

"I can't wait," she said, and when her smile wrinkled her nose under his finger, he thought everything might be okay for once.


	5. Acclimation

Author's Note: Holy _cow_ I'm sorry this took so long. Finals kicked my butt, but I'm done, and I should be getting this and perhaps another couple of stories out with more regularity. So sorry about the delay, but here's some fluff!

* * *

Martha was beginning to regret letting the Doctor drop her off.

_"Just one week,"_ she'd said, her hands clasped like a child begging a favor from an indulgent parent. _"Dean said they're working an easy case and I want to go along. It should be done really quickly but after that I want to help Sam do some research."_

The Doctor had hemmed and hawed and busied himself with the TARDIS console, hands flitting over controls and gaze deliberately avoidant. When Martha pressed him, he'd said, _"I don't like the idea of you killing, Martha."_

And Martha had been of two minds about that. One told her to say to the Doctor the same thing she'd said to Dean when he tried to boss her, which was that she already had a dad and didn't need another one, thanks. But the other told her that she didn't feel good about that idea, either. So instead of snapping at him, she'd said, _"It's a salt-and-burn, Doctor. They're laying a spirit to rest. Nobody's dying who wasn't dead to begin with, and the spirit is killing as it is."_

The Doctor had looked at her, then, and smiled a sad kind of smile. _"All right,"_ he'd said, _"go lay to rest evil spirits with your boyfriend."_

And Martha had glared at him and said, _"He's not my boyfriend. We've been on _a_ date. A, as in one."_

Laughter was the Doctor's only response to that.

The hunt had gone just fine, and while Dean had been annoyingly protective and kept jumping in front of her if there was any sign of danger, he did let her pour some kerosene into the grave. He didn't let her light the match, which was what she _wanted_ to do, but he said that it took their dad _years_ to let him and Sammy do it, and she wasn't going to get off any easier.

Sam had snorted, but didn't disagree as he watched his brother light the match.

It was a strange moment for Martha, huddled next to Sam by the gaping grave, her eyes fixed on Dean as he set the whole book on fire. She'd been waiting for it, in a way, wondering what this moment would be like. What she'd see in his eyes, lit only by the flaming match book, as she hugged her coat close and kept a good grip on the iron bar the brothers had given her in case the ghost tried for one more murder before surrendering to the afterlife. She'd been a little afraid, really. Afraid she'd see something in his eyes that she didn't want to see, but that couldn't be taken back.

And she watched carefully in the dim, sparking light, watched the green light up and become visible. And she saw grim satisfaction, to be sure. Relief. And maybe even a hint of vengeance—_this is for the kid at the cabin—_but there wasn't pleasure. There wasn't hunger.

Martha didn't see the point in lying to herself. Dean Winchester was as little like the Doctor as it was possible to be, in a lot of ways. Dean was a killer, and an unrepentant one. Dean saw the world in shades of black and white, human and non-human. Dean had been in training to be a killer for longer than she'd been alive. Dean's world was guns and rock salt and devil's traps and exorcisms, dirty motel rooms and greasy diner food and endless stretches of highway, running and stitching wounds and watching his brother's back.

She wondered if it should bother her that it didn't matter to her. That she knew, deep down somewhere she could hardly understand, that she'd take him, guns and scars and all.

(It didn't.)

But.

_But._

"This room is _repulsive_."

Sam burst out laughing, and Dean just grinned, throwing his duffel at the foot of the bed closest to the door. Martha glanced around in disgust, her nose wrinkling as she surveyed the peeling paint, the stained carpet, the dusty surfaces, and she didn't even want to _think_ about the sheets.

"Home sweet home!" Dean exclaimed, sprawling out on the bed, which responded with an ominous creaking of springs. Martha's expression of dismay elicited another peal of laughter from Sam, and Dean craned his neck to look at her. "Aw, come on, princess. All that traveling with the Doctor and you've never had to camp out in shady digs?"

"Shady, yes," Martha replied, putting her backpack down on the table. "But this looks like an infectious disease factory."

"Good for the immune system," Dean insisted. Martha shot him a dubious glare, and he laughed, too. "And anyway you're stranded here, so you might as well get used to it, right?"

The temptation to mouth off was almost irresistible, and she would have said something snarky, but there was something about the way he said _right?_ that stopped her. Like it was really a question.

Like he was afraid she'd maybe call up the Doctor and leave.

So despite her fear of the myriad contagious diseases she was risking contracting, she shrugged off her jacket, hung it over the back of a chair and went to sit on the bed with Dean. "Camping is cheap, you know," she muttered, but there wasn't any heat in it.

"But showers and air conditioning and heating are priceless," Dean replied, and she felt the bed shift as he rolled over to face her. "Also, if you're so worried about our living arrangements, maybe you should have the Doc park _his_ baby here at night so we can sleep in those sweet rooms she whips up for us."

Martha smiled, rolling her eyes, and Sam cleared his throat. "I'm, ah," he began, and his jaw twitched with the effort of suppressing a smile. "I'm gonna go to the library, grab some books, see what I can dig up on the Seals. Okay?"

It was all Martha could do not to laugh when she saw the way Dean flushed at Sam's transparency, but he managed a reasonably casual "Sure, Sammy, see you later." Martha waved to him as he left.

The door clicked shut, and Martha pulled her legs up on the bed, twisting to face Dean. He wasn't looking at her, though, and when she opened her mouth to ask what was wrong he said, "You don't have to stay here if you don't want to."

Oh. She sighed deeply and stretched out on the bed, still facing him, and she lifted her head to accommodate his arm when he reached out to draw her in. "I want to," she replied softly.

"I know it's gross, but we can't really afford to be high-profile," he said, and it sounded apologetic in a way that twisted Martha's stomach.

"It's fine," she said, rolling onto her back and taking his free arm into her hands. "That bruise is going to heal nicely," she announced.

"Martha," Dean admonished, and she tilted her head to meet his eyes. "Seriously. You can call him to come get you. You helped with the hunt, you did your piece. Me and Sammy won't hold it against you."

She hesitated for a second, watching him, staring at the eyes she'd studied in such depth at the cemetery, and she took the arm that she was holding and threaded her fingers between his. She drew his hand to her chest, and tucked it under her chin. "I'm where I want to be, Dean," she said. "Believe it or not, but I'm exactly where I want to be."

Dean smiled, a hopeful, faltering thing that made her heart skip. "You're exactly where I want you to be, too," he said.

When Sam returned three hours later, he found them asleep pretty much just as he'd left them, but with soft smiles on both of their faces. He found himself smiling, too, and put his books carefully on the table. He walked over to the bed and pulled a blanket over the two of them, then quietly went to bed himself.

And when Martha awoke in the morning, Dean warm and comforting next to her, she thought that maybe she could get used to motels.


	6. Retrogradation

Author's Note: For a "Doctor Who" crossover there's been vanishingly little Doctor, so allons-y. :)

* * *

Dean rarely found himself alone in the control room of the TARDIS with the Doctor, but here he was.

And he got the feeling that he was missing something.

The Doctor was fiddling with things. And that wasn't unusual or anything, it seemed like for a bazillion year old alien or whatever he had the energy of an ADD toddler, but there was something weird about it. Like he wasn't looking at Dean on purpose. Like he was just keeping his hands busy.

"So, we heading back to Sioux Falls now?" Dean asked, if only to break the silence.

"What?" the Doctor murmured, then startled and looked at Dean with wide eyes. "Oh! Yes! Sioux Falls, yes, 2009, our destination. Yes, quite so."

Dean's brow furrowed as he watched the Doctor race around the main console, looking everywhere but at Dean. "You, uh, you okay, Doc?" he asked.

"Hm? Oh yes, yes." The reply came so distracted and disinterested that it made Dean frown, his thoughts racing back to their last case. _Adventure_, Martha would say. And he couldn't help but smile a little at the thought of her and her boundless optimism in the face of not only all the crap that the Earth could throw at her, but all the crap that the _universe_ could throw at her. And she still managed to smile and call these things _adventures_.

But their last case. Was there anything that could have possessed the Doctor? Whammied him? Brainwashed him? He didn't know a lot about aliens, but the ones they'd been dealing with didn't seem like the type and the Doc hadn't warned them about the possibility. He was pretty good about that, about being thorough when he told the brothers about what it was they were facing. He hadn't mentioned anything, but that didn't mean he couldn't have been blindsided by it. Sometimes the guy was awfully "just human" for someone who wasn't human at all. And he sure was acting weird.

He opened his mouth to say something about it when the Doctor turned around and met his eyes with a firmness that startled Dean's words right out of his mind, and the Time Lord said, "Dean Winchester, what are your intentions with my Companion?"

Dean shut his mouth with a _pop_.

Nope.

_Nope._

He was _not_ having this conversation with the Doctor.

"Um, what?" was the most coherent thing he was confident he could manage at this particular juncture, so he went with it, and the Doctor blanched.

"I've noticed that the two of you are becoming...closer," he said, taking out his screwdriver and faking that he was fixing something on the console. Dean wasn't stupid, he knew a diversion when he saw it. It wasn't like he loved talking about this kind of crap either. "She's having me drop her off with you boys more frequently, and for longer and longer each time. She actually used the word _gank_ unironically a week ago and didn't even have the decency to be embarrassed when I mentioned it. And don't think I didn't notice that plaid overshirt you left with her."

And like a slap in the face, without warning, Dean was fifteen years old again.

_He's nothing but trouble_

_Just wanders into town_

_Don't even know where he came from_

_I've never even _seen_ his parents_

_Boys like him only want one thing_

_He's not good enough for you, honey. I don't want you seeing him anymore._

The Doctor was looking at him weird but he didn't care. He felt his back straighten into the kind of line his father would have been proud of, and his lips pressed tight to follow suit. He kept his head high but cast his eyes down. He should have seen this coming.

Shit, he should have known.

Because they weren't wrong. The girls' parents, the girls he'd dated back when he was a kid. He didn't deserve them, just like he didn't deserve any of the things he had—and usually that was proven to him when they were taken away. Sam, Bobby, Cas, the Doctor...he didn't deserve them.

Maybe Martha least of all.

"That's fine," he said tightly. "I get it."

The Doctor didn't say anything, just watched him, his dark eyes suddenly cautious.

"I'll do it, I'll tell her. It wasn't going to work anyway. I mean, she'd see sooner or later, right? That running away from home to my shitty life isn't like running away from home to your life. That anybody who hangs out with me too long winds up hurt or dead. And she's..." Dean broke off, clenching his trembling hands into fists, and he finished, "I know she's too good for me."

The silence that followed his words wasn't comforting, but he refused to look up, to see the Doctor affirm the things he already knew to be true.

He didn't need another person saying the same things he'd known his whole life.

So he didn't look up, not even when he heard the Doctor say, "Dean."

"Is she in her room?" Dean asked, cutting off whatever false platitudes the Doctor was whipping up. "I'll just go talk to her." He started off to the hallway, hoping that the TARDIS would direct him where he needed to go, when he felt the Doctor's hand on his arm, restraining him. He looked, then.

The Doctor's face was a kaleidescope of emotion. Confusion, grief, amusement, frustration, and that fondness that still didn't make any sense in Dean's mind all warred for dominance in his expression. It was the fondness that won out as he pulled Dean into an embrace, one that Dean was a little too puzzled to break away from. "You are just among the stupidest, most self-loathing human beings I have ever met," the Time Lord said, softly, right against Dean's ear. "No one even has to say anything for you to assume the worst, and to assume it's your fault."

Then Dean _did_ pull away, shoving the Doctor from him and gaining a bleak satisfaction from the step or two the Doctor staggered back. "Don't patronize me," he said. "I know what this is, okay? I've been...I've been _me_ long enough to know what this is."

The Doctor made as though to step towards him, then caught himself, running his hands through his already-wild hair and collecting himself for a moment. "Dean. No, don't interrupt me, let me talk. You might think that you have the monopoly on loneliness, but you don't. Do you understand? You don't. I know that you know what loss is but trust me when I say that I've lost more than you've ever _dreamt_ of having. And it was _genuinely_ my fault. So if there's one of us Martha should not associate with, you're not it."

Dean was silent, studying the Doctor's face, looking for the lie in it.

"She loves you," the Doctor said, and it wasn't a concession. It was just the truth, at least the way it sounded in the Doctor's voice. "And you love her. And if there's one thing there's never enough of in this wide universe it's love. I just want to make sure that you'll allow yourself to love her the way you both deserve."

_Deserve_, Dean thought, his lip curling up just the smallest bit into a disbelieving sneer. Right, the love he _deserved_.

He didn't realize he'd scoffed out loud until the Doctor said, "Yes. Deserve. You deserve whatever she's willing to give you, and she deserves whatever you're willing to give her. You're two brave, _brilliant_ people trying to do something good in the world and you deserve happiness, and if it's together, fantastic. Do you understand?"

And despite himself, Dean nodded. Because the way the Doctor said it, it made sense. The way the Doctor said it, he could almost believe it.

Maybe not quite. But almost.

The caving must have been visible on his face because the Doctor grinned and clapped Dean on the shoulder. "That was _far_ more traumatic than it was intended to be," the Time Lord said, and there was just a hint of weariness to lend truth to his words. "I was planning to give you a hard time about it, you know, do my duty as the closest thing to an older brother she has hanging 'round, but that..." He broke off, brows furrowing a bit, before his expression brightened again. "And anyway, if it's consolation, I think your brother's having a similar conversation with Martha in the study."

Suddenly what Dean deserved or didn't deserve mattered a whole lot less.

Because he was going to _kill_ his brother.


	7. Explication

Author's Note: Some sweet Sammy doing his brother thing and his I'm-the-only-one-who-remembers-The Year That Never Was thing. :)

* * *

The study was Sam's second-favorite room on the TARDIS. The first, of course, being the library, which was happily adjacent to the study. But there was something cozy and homey about the study, and also, the Doctor didn't freak out if you brought coffee or tea there.

The Doctor had said that Martha was there, so it's where Sam headed, two mugs of Earl Grey in his hands, one fixed like he'd seen Dean fix it for Martha. (That had been a week and a half ago, and Sam had zero intention of letting his brother live it down. What unthinkable domesticity from the great Dean Winchester.) He stood in front of the door and waited for it to open.

When it did, he saw that Martha was sitting on one of the big, comfy chairs in the middle of the study, snuggled in with a book. It was large, green, and apparently either in Gallifreyan or about Gallifrey, judging by the silver embossed title in circular Gallifreyan on the cover. They'd been studying the language together, Sam and Martha, and he knew that she'd steal away quiet moments to try some reading in the Doctor's vast and singular collection of Gallifreyan literature and histories. She was too engrossed in her studies to notice the door opening, so he tapped his foot on the door frame to alert her to his presence. She looked up sharply, but her expression quickly softened into a smile when she saw him. "Hey, Sam," she said, holding her place in her book with a finger as she shifted to a more welcoming, less sleepy posture. "Oh, tea!"

Sam walked in and set the two mugs on the table between Martha's chair and the chair he subsequently took. "I think I made your tea right," he said, and she smiled wider as she took the mug gratefully and raised it to her lips. Sam grinned as he added, "At least, I'm pretty sure this is how Dean made it."

She pressed her smile against the lip of the mug and said, "You're never going to let that go, are you?" Sam shook his head, and she laughed. "Poor Dean. The thanks he gets for trying to be sweet."

"I don't think it was thanks from _me_ he was looking for," Sam remarked, and Martha laughed again, bright and spontaneous. Sam settled into the chair—as always, surprised in the back of his mind that it was big enough for him to really settle into comfortably—and took the mug between his hands, letting the warmth seep into his skin.

Martha seemed at perfect ease in the silence, closing her eyes as she sipped from her mug with this blissed-out expression on her face. He'd gotten used to seeing happiness in her, and, more strangely and more wonderfully, in his brother when he was with her. They were so far from the hesitant, broken-and-splinted friendship he'd witnessed aboard the _Valiant_.

And this happy, sweet Martha was so far from the broken-and-healing woman he spoke to on the phone every so often, when the burden of memory became too much to bear. The woman who was waiting patiently in London until it was safe to come back; until it was safe to see them again.

He swallowed hard and didn't look at her as he said, "Can I talk to you about something?"

He felt more than saw her shift, dark eyes suddenly and intently focused on him. "Sure," she said. "What's on your mind?"

_So freaking many things_. A year of captivity on board an airship and getting his chain yanked by Time Lords and being solely responsible for watching his tongue well enough to prevent a paradox and his big brother getting the chance to be happy for once in his life, for once getting something that he really deserved, someone that he really deserved and who Sam thought maybe, _just maybe_, deserved him, too.

"If you tell Dean I said anything to you he'll flay me alive," Sam said as preamble, and looked up to see Martha's eyes widen a bit before she nodded her assent to keep it quiet. "I just wanted...I wanted to talk to you about him."

"About Dean," Martha echoed.

"I know that the two of you kind of have a thing going," Sam continued, "and, you know, I thought we could talk about it."

Martha lowered her head so that her brow touched the rim of her cup, and she muttered, "Is this the _you-break-his-heart-I-break-your-face_ talk?"

Sam startled. "What?"

"My sister, Tish, she used to give this talk to the boys I fancied," Martha said, evidently trying to bury her face in her mug of tea. "My brother Leo, too."

"No, that's—" Sam broke off, putting his mug on the table between them and running his hands over his face, through his hair. "That's not what I mean. I just think that there are some things you need to know. If you want to, you know. Do this."

"Do what?" Martha asked.

"Be with Dean," Sam said, like ripping off a band-aid. "In a real way. Not just flirting and playing around but really be _with_ him, because I see it in both of you, okay? I know my brother. He cares about you and he's...he's not as strong as he looks."

Martha put her mug on the table next to Sam's and shifted in her seat so that she was facing him. She wrapped her arms around her knees and watched him, listening intently with an expression of concern.

Sam swallowed hard, not sure how to go about this. He knew how Martha felt about Dean. Hell, he'd seen the fruit of it, seen how much it cost her to try to protect his future during the Year, as they called it, and how willing she was to pay that price. But this Martha was different, right? This Martha didn't know. She didn't know Dean like he did. And as good as she'd been to him, she didn't know half of the crap he'd been through or the thousand little things she could do to rub salt into those wounds. It was as much for her good as it was for his. Right?

"Everybody leaves Dean," Sam found himself saying quietly. Martha's eyes didn't waver, didn't lose their focus. "Everybody. He was old enough to remember Mom, old enough to miss her. When Dad died he thought it was his fault. We didn't have anybody else growing up. Just us. And hell, _I_ left him. I left for Stanford and I didn't even...I didn't know he wouldn't get over it. I mean, maybe I did. But I left him. And then just when he got me back, I got killed, and he couldn't..." He broke off, passing a hand over his face, coming to rest over his mouth. Martha reached out a hand across the space between them and let it lay on his arm, gently, easily shaken off if he wanted.

He didn't.

"Dean's used to people leaving him," he continued unsteadily. "To the point where now he just does the leaving first. He hasn't had more than a one-night stand in years. And he says it's because he doesn't want to pull somebody into this life, because he's bad luck or there's nobody who would understand. He just...he just doesn't want to get left again." Sam looked down. "He can't do it anymore."

"Sam..." Martha whispered.

"Don't leave him," Sam said, and Martha fell silent. "If you're gonna do this, make sure you mean it, because I don't think he can take another person leaving him. I don't want to put this on you but my brother...he trusts you, okay? Dean doesn't trust anybody—hell, half the time he doesn't trust me—but he trusts you. So don't do what I did. Don't leave him."

Neither of them said anything for a long moment, but after a while Martha started running her hand along Sam's arm in a reassuring gesture. It was his turn to watch her, then, waiting for her response. She looked thoughtful, carefully considering what he'd said, and he appreciated it. There would be no quick promises, no throwaway platitudes. She knew he'd meant it, and she was taking it seriously.

It surprised him when her response was, "I thought I was in love with the Doctor."

He stilled, and she pressed her thumb against his arm. "I _thought_ I was. He was so wonderful, so exciting and brilliant and full of life. I'd never known anybody like that before. But Dean..." She trailed off, taking her hand away from Sam's arm and cupping her mug between her hands, a small smile playing on her lips. "I've thought a lot about why. Why I feel the way I do. I worried that it was just excitement, just the never-a-dull-moment way the two of you live. Or that it's because the two of you are _important_. But it's not that. It's not any of that. Your brother is smart, and funny, and kind, loving, and, not gonna lie, gorgeous. Best of all, he doesn't even know he is." She paused. "Well. Except for the gorgeous bit. He seems aware of that."

Sam snorted.

"But the rest of it..." Martha hesitated, and finished, "I want to help him find out."

Sam marveled at the way her smile spread across her face, wide and bright and genuine, as she said, "So if he'll have me, I'll stay." She met his eyes again and he knew she was telling the truth.

He knew she was telling the truth, and yet he knew that she walked away from his brother at the end of the Year. He just hoped this meant that she'd come back for him.

So he smiled back at her and said, "Thanks, Martha."

She swatted him on the arm, then rolled her eyes. "Dean _is_ gonna kill you if he finds out about this, though," she said.

Sam was about to say _yeah, he really is_ when Dean barreled through the door and tackled him right out of his chair to the sound of Dean's roar of rage and Martha's shriek of laughter.


	8. Appellation II

Author's Note: Tiny baby chapter. I might recommend re-reading chapter 21 ("Chapter Twenty: Dean Winchester") of "And What Will Never Be" before reading this to get the fullest impact of the last bit.

* * *

Dean's mussed hair was barely visible from beneath the floor of the TARDIS console.

Martha was sprawled out next to one of the great organic pillars that rose from floor to ceiling, her notebook full of Gallifreyan phrases and the circular calligraphy of the written language propped up on her knees. She called out a phrase to Sam, who was sitting with his back against the door, his own notebook on his legs.

She heard Sam stifle a laugh before he said, "Uh, _nine hundred years old and still acts like a child_."

"You two are charming," the Doctor called dryly from under the console, and Dean snorted. "I'm glad you're putting your academic studies of my native language to such good use."

Martha called out another phrase, and Sam translated for Dean's benefit: "You're welcome."

"Any progress on the braking mechanism?" Martha asked, holding her place in the book with a finger and peering down at Dean and the Doctor.

The Doctor made a discontented noise, but Dean popped his head up and grinned. "It's slow going," he said, trying to sound appropriately somber, but glowing like a kid at Christmas. His hair was sticking up and his face was covered with a sheen of sweat, but Martha knew that he was having fun. Nothing like giving Dean some mechanical work to do to take his mind off of everything else going wrong in his life.

"You could help, you know," the Doctor called. Dean raised an eyebrow at her, and she laughed.

"I think you and Dean have it covered," she replied, settling back against the column as Dean ducked back down into the console with a wink.

"Having this extra help aboard is bad for your work ethic," Martha heard the Doctor snipe, and she grinned at Sam, who smiled and shook his head. "You never used to be so lazy."

"Like I'd deny Dean his tinkering," Martha shot back. "You two are having fun and don't pretend you're not."

There was a silence, then, and when Martha glanced down at her boys below the floor she saw the Doctor and Dean looking at each other, Dean beaming, the Doctor smiling back fondly. "Hard to argue with the lady when she's right," Dean remarked, and the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Wanna pass me that wrench?"

"Spanner."

"_Wrench_."

"Doesn't matter because that one won't fit. You'll need the size up."

Dean looked around the underside of the console, then up through the translucent ceiling. Martha followed his eyes and saw the spanner that he needed, next to the overflowing kit full of tools.

"Hey, MJ, wanna toss me that _spanner_?"

Martha paused, uncomprehending for a minute, feeling a little fluttery for a second while the nickname washed over her.

"Thought you were Batman, not Spiderman," Sam snickered.

"Shut up, bitch," came the slightly abashed reply, while Martha crawled over and grabbed the tool.

"Jerk," Sam retorted, not even looking up from his book. Spanner in hand, Martha leaned over the opening and held out the tool for Dean.

He took it, and looked up at her, crooked smile still dancing on his face. "Mind if I call you that?" he asked.

No one in Dean's life got called by their given name. There was no Robert, Samuel, Doctor, or Castiel in Dean's lexicon, just Bobby, Sammy, Doc, and Cas. Dean spoke like he had an allergy to full names.

It had been _months_ and he'd still been calling her Martha, except for the one time he tried to call her Marty and she'd made the most awful face, and he'd laughed and never tried it again.

MJ, though. MJ she liked.

"Nope," she replied, brushing some metal filings out of his hair. He grinned wider and pulled himself up to plant a quick kiss on her cheek. She turned just in time and redirected it to her lips. When they pulled away, just an inch, just enough room to talk, she added, "I like it."

"I like _you_," Dean replied, and twin groans sounded from Sam and the Doctor. Dean glared at them both consecutively, demanding, "What?"

"I thought you didn't do chick-flick moments," Sam said.

Dean snorted and rolled his eyes while Martha grinned. "I guess when you start traveling with a chick, you get used to it," he replied.

And Martha didn't understand why Sam got so quiet and so still all of a sudden, but for the rest of the afternoon, he didn't say a word.


	9. Disassociation

Author's Note: This takes place at a hypothetical time, post-"The Rapture", where Castiel was forced to leave Jimmy on Earth while attending to something in Heaven. I wanted some Martha + Jimmy interaction so I finagled it.

There's one, maybe two more shorts in this series, before I start turning my attention over to "Nightmare on Weinbach Ave", which might take some time to come out, but I am working on!

* * *

There was nothing of Castiel in him.

Martha sat on the couch, her legs pulled up and feet tucked under her knees, as far from the crumpled, dejected figure as possible—for his sake, not for hers. She didn't blame him. Couldn't. She would want some privacy, some distance, if she were in his place. He got so vanishingly little, usually.

Martha was used to the slightly hunched, constrained posture that Castiel walked with, like his body didn't fit him, like it was too small. When he straightened he seemed huge, but those instances were few and far between, and it usually seemed like Dean and Sam towered over him. But comparatively she thought Castiel would look like a Winchester next to this man, curled up and weary and alone.

She'd learned to read Castiel's expressions, as little as they varied from one another. But an arched eyebrow, a tilt of the head, a narrowing or widening of blue eyes could tell Martha volumes, especially when she was able to pair it with Dean's mood. (The two of them had some sort of symbiotic emotional life that she knew she was never going to understand, and it had long since ceased to baffle her.) They were subtle, quiet, and stoic, but she was able to read them and she'd grown to expect a certain restraint on his face. She hadn't grown to expect this open book of misery, the drawn, pale look of him, the way his eyebrows curved up and his lips pressed together in an effort to stave off tears.

There was nothing of Castiel in the way his hands worked the cuffs of his slacks, his knees drawn up to his chest.

There was nothing of Castiel in the way his breath hitched, the way he fought off the emotion that threatened to drown him, the way he was losing that battle.

There was nothing of Castiel in the way his eyes kept flicking over to her, waiting for her to say something, waiting for her to express her disappointment in how little Castiel he was.

So she decided to disappoint _him_. She scooted closer to him—not close enough to touch, not yet, not if he didn't want her to. But closer, and she said, "Hanging in there, Jimmy?"

And he coughed out a laugh and said, "It's not like I have to _do_ anything. I'm just waiting."

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

He shook his head, a quick, sharp movement. "No. Dinner was enough." He glanced over at her, and those bright blue eyes softened a little bit—a touch of the panic in them faded, and he said, "It was really good, actually. Thank you. You're a good cook."

She waved a hand dismissively. "Bobby did the bulk of it, I just helped. But I am glad you enjoyed it."

He smiled at her, and it was barely more than a twitch of the lips. So fleeting she wasn't sure she'd really seen it, but she hoped she wasn't wrong. He looked over to her and said, "You don't have to stand watch, you know. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be here when he comes back for me. You can go back to Dean."

Martha shrugged, masking the pang his words caused. "I'm not _standing watch_, Jimmy, I'm keeping you company," she said. "Unless you'd prefer to be alone. I'd understand if you would."

"No, no," he said quickly, turning a little to face her more fully. "It's...it's fine. I get enough silence, believe me." He bit his lip, and looked away from her, his fingers still kneading the fabric of his slacks. "I'd...I'd appreciate the company. I'd appreciate somebody talking to me."

"Then let's talk," Martha said, mirroring his position as she pulled her knees up to her chin.

Jimmy smiled sideways, a look that was far more familiar from Dean or the Doctor than Castiel, and Martha thought briefly that Jimmy might fit in with their little group if he hadn't volunteered his body for a greater cause.

The Doctor had been so angry when he figured out what was going on with Castiel and Jimmy. Martha was worried that it was going to come to blows, and she was sure _she_ didn't want to be in the room when an angel and a Time Lord went at it, but she and Dean had managed to pull the two of them away from each other before either of them did something he regretted. Then they switched: Dean went to talk to the Doctor, and Martha went to talk to Castiel, both explaining the other's point of view, trying to defuse the situation. It remained tense, but nobody was smote or erased from time, so they called it a win and left it alone.

She figured Dean was getting the same kind of earful she was when she sat in the TARDIS and listened to the Doctor rant about how invasion by parasitism was a war crime under the Shadow Proclamation, how the angels should know better, how consent was hardly relevant in this situation because how could a human raised to be religious say no to that kind of request, until he finally burnt out and slumped down next to her by the console.

_"I just hope that poor man understands what he's gotten himself into,"_ the Doctor had said softly. _"And that Castiel treats him properly and returns him to his family when he's done. I hope I don't regret not turning him in."_

But it was clear now that Jimmy wasn't going home. Not soon, not ever, because he was a demon magnet and he wouldn't do that to his family. So here he was, huddled in an unfamiliar den, waiting for Castiel to return to take over his body.

So she talked to him, sat with him on the couch and just chatted. He told her about Amelia and Claire; she told him about her parents, about Leo and Tish. He preferred to hear her talk, to hear her stories about the Doctor, about traveling, about anything that wasn't Castiel and the Apocalypse. She leaned heavily on stories that didn't feature Dean or Sam; she figured he'd heard enough about them.

"And then," she said, appreciating the wide grin on Jimmy's face, "the Doctor said 'we can all have a good flirt later', and Shakespeare said, 'is that a promise?'"

Jimmy laughed, loud and full, and Martha joined him before saying, "And then the Doctor said 'oh, fifty-seven academics just punched the air!'"

Jimmy's laugh trailed off into a chuckle, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. Turning, he glanced at the clock, which read a quarter to one in the morning. "Castiel's taking his time," he said, then broke into a yawn. Martha smiled sadly. "I think I might lay this much-abused body down for forty winks before he gets back."

Martha didn't say anything, but Jimmy didn't lie down, just kind of looked at the couch and then up at Martha, grief painting his features. She frowned. "What's wrong?"

Jimmy's jaw worked for a moment, and he looked away. She scooted a little closer. "Jimmy? What's the matter?"

"Before..." he began, then cleared his throat. "Before...all this, when I took naps on the couch, I'd lay my head on Amelia's legs. I just...realized I'll never be able to again."

Martha looked down so he couldn't so clearly see the sympathy in her eyes. He didn't need it, she knew.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't know why I even said that. Just...being awake, totally awake, it's...weird."

Martha scooted back away, and hurt flashed through his eyes for a moment before she smiled at him, again sadly, again hesitantly. "I'm not Amelia," she said, "but I'm here if it'll make you more comfortable."

Jimmy startled, his eyes wide. "I couldn't," he said. "Dean—"

"Will understand," Martha interrupted, "or he's not half the man I think he is. It's nothing wrong, Jimmy. Just human comfort. I'm trusting you won't get cheeky."

"I can't, I—"

"Jimmy." He quieted at her voice, his expression softening. "You've given too much. Let somebody give to you for once. Take a rest."

Slowly, carefully, he levered himself down, keeping his eyes on her the whole time like he was afraid she'd change her mind halfway through. She just smiled and rested a hand on his arm when he finally came to rest.

Within a few minutes he was fast asleep, Martha humming soft nonsense songs. She didn't stop until she felt a presence in the doorway, and looked up.

Dean's expression was one of confusion, and when he met Martha's eyes, it didn't fade. She simply returned his gaze, sadness and just the slightest tinge of challenge in her eyes. _I dare you to deny him this._

And as it turned out, Dean was the man that Martha thought him to be. He smiled, walked over to her and laid his hand against her cheek, tilting her head up for a gentle kiss. She smiled into it.

"Let him rest," Martha breathed. "He'll be back soon."

Dean nodded and walked out, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Martha sat in the room with Jimmy Novak until dawn, until Castiel returned. When the angel once again took control of Jimmy's body, they didn't speak of what had passed between them.

But Martha was pretty sure she saw a flash, just a hint of gratitude in Jimmy's—Castiel's eyes before he turned to tell the Winchesters what he'd learned in Heaven.


	10. Abdication

Author's Note: So, this break hasn't been as restful as I thought it would be, but I did not mean to let this go as long as I did. I am very sorry, and thank you so much for all of your kind words in the reviews and your patience. We are winding this one down, ladies and gentlemen, with one or two chapters remaining!

* * *

It was always going to happen.

The Doctor knew that. Martha was not his first Companion, and he knew she wouldn't be his last. For one reason or another, they all left, and it was for the best. He'd lose them eventually regardless...to old age, to accident, to violence, despite how he tried to prevent it. It was better for them to make the choice to leave. Better to go on their own terms.

And at least this time, he could see it coming.

He could see it n the way that Martha asked more and more frequently to stay longer and longer with the Winchesters, and came back to the TARDIS full of stories about her adventures with the boys. She'd talk about it while they walked on planets galaxies away from her home, while they visited times farther from her own than she could imagine.

Unfathomable places and eras, and she said, "Dean showed me how to change the oil on the Impala."

The Doctor treated a hairline fracture on her shin after a run-in with a nasty, hostile reptilian species on a planet that was slowly being drained of water until they got there and saved it, and Martha said, "Bobby's gonna make us repaint the devil's traps and sigils around the house when we get back to Sioux Falls. I think I've finally got the hang of the designs. Want me to show you?"

He took her to see the moment that the Earth coalesced into roughly its current form, and (after an appropriate moment of awe) she said, "Castiel's probably here. Oh, did I tell you what happened when we took him to the carnival when we were investigating the boys' last case?"

He sat next to her in the library, each holding a book in his native tongue—the language of a race that never existed within the time line she inhabited, and yet one of its sons sat with her—and she said, "Doctor, I think I'm in love with Dean."

And the Doctor could hardly find it in himself to be unhappy about it.

Yes, this meant that he'd lose her. But he would have lost her anyway. And this way, he was losing her to someone who needed her more than he did. He was losing her to someone that he cared about, someone whose happiness meant a great deal to him, but more importantly he was losing her to someone who loved her even more than he did. He'd lose her to a life he didn't want for her, a life of fear and violence and uncertainty, but, as she reminded him frequently, he was not her father. She was an adult, and she'd made her decision.

And perhaps this would mean that he'd get to keep her in _his_ life more than he would otherwise. It wasn't like the Winchesters weren't constantly on his radar.

So the Doctor stood next to Castiel in front of Singer Salvage and gazed out bemusedly as the Impala roared to life. He watched Martha swing herself into the passenger's seat at the last moment before Dean (had to be Dean) gunned it and took off down the dusty lane as though they were pursued by...the sorts of things they were normally pursued by.

He turned to Castiel, who was likewise staring after them, and said, "Seems your wild boys have absconded with my Companion."

Castiel turned to him, eyes narrowed as usual. "They are hardly my boys," he intoned.

The Doctor scoffed, waving a hand to emphasize his dismissal of the statement. "_Please_," he said. "You might not want to claim them, but they've latched on to you, and it's too late now, my friend. Humans are hard to extract, once they've attached."

"I did not say I wanted them gone," Castiel said, as though concerned that the Doctor had truly mistaken him.

"No," the Doctor replied, "of course not. But it is rather like having two hyperactive toddlers as your responsibility."

"With a vehicle," Castiel added, morose.

The car left their field of vision (well, the Doctor's field of vision, at least; he still hadn't figured out what Castiel's enhanced senses could detect), and the Doctor smiled softly. "They make each other happy," he said quietly.

"They do," Castiel agreed. "Dean is rarely as at peace as he is when Martha is near. It is...a relief to feel that in his soul."

"She wants to stay," the Doctor continued, and Castiel stilled, knowing what that meant to the Time Lord. "For good. She hasn't said she wants to leave, yet, but I know that she will, and soon."

He ran a hand through his hair and tried to avoid Castiel's keen gaze, but found himself unable to keep from meeting it. The angel's expression was far more understanding than the Doctor had expected, and he said, "I will protect her, Doctor. As though she were my charge."

The Doctor nodded, smiling sadly. "Thank you, Castiel," he said. "That comforts me."

And it did.

Because this was always going to happen. Martha was always going to leave the Doctor, one way or another, and to have Castiel look out for her was the next best thing to looking out for her himself.

But there was one other thing that was always going to happen, and the Doctor dreaded it.

Because eventually, and by now sooner rather than later, Martha was going to find the Gospels.

And it would change everything.


	11. Obliteration

Author's Note: There will be one more chapter, I've decided, because I can't end on this note. Also, there are **huge spoilers for Supernatural episode 5x22, "Swan Song" **in this chapter. I know it's been a while since it's aired, but I caught up late with the series, so I don't want to ruin it for anybody else. Basically the whole end to the episode is contained in this story, so if you haven't seen it and don't want it spoiled, this might not be a good story for you.

Otherwise, allons-y.

* * *

"You knew."

The Doctor's eyes fell on what was in her hands as he walked into the library, and he winced, but Martha didn't care. "You knew the whole time. Since when? Since I met them? Since _you_ met them?"

He ran a hand over his face, looking suddenly small and defeated. "Martha, I can explain."

She shook her head vigorously. "No. No, I don't want you to explain. I want you to change it."

He didn't say anything, but the sadness in his eyes was answer enough.

Martha hurled the clipped-together bundle of papers at him, and he dodged, taking it on the shoulder. He let her hit him with it, she knew, and the fact that he was allowing her to punish him only made her want to cry more. "Fix it! Doctor, don't let them do it! That's what we do, isn't it? We fix things! We change things! We help people!"

The Doctor walked up to her and knelt in front of her, trying to take her hand between his, but she pulled away and curled into the corner of the chair. "Martha, _please_. Listen to me. If there was anything I could—"

"Why is there never anything we can do when it's _him_?" Martha asked, her voice hitching in the last word. "It's not fair."

"It's really not," the Doctor agreed softly. "And I'm so—"

"If you say that you're _sorry_ I will smack you so far into next year the TARDIS will have to look for you," Martha hissed. "Don't say you're sorry. Help me."

"It's not just prophecy, Martha, it's...it's fixed. It's _written_, not just in this book, but in the pattern of the universe." He rested his hand on her arm, and she let him, mostly because she barely felt it. "There's nothing I can do."

"Can't we _try_?" Martha knew how she sounded. She knew that her voice rasped and scratched over the words, but she could hardly breathe for grief.

The Doctor said nothing.

Martha hadn't meant to find the books, and hadn't _been_ meant to find the books. It was obvious. The Doctor had been acting shifty for days, ever since she told him that she wanted to stay with the Winchesters. With Dean. She figured that it was just that he was hurt, and she didn't press him, but she did give him his space. She took to the library, trying to stay out of his way.

They were tucked out of order on one of the back shelves. The whole series of them, dog-eared and so ordinary. Then she pulled one out and read the back cover.

_"Along a lonely California highway, a mysterious Woman in White lures men to their deaths...a terrifying phenomenon that may be Sam and Dean's first clue to their father's whereabouts."_

At first, she thought it was kind of funny, if a little alarming. She was especially amused by the Fabio-esque depictions of the boys on the covers. She didn't read through them—it wasn't as though she didn't already know most of the stories—but she skimmed.

Some she read more thoroughly than others. Some she skipped entirely. And when she got to the end, the last book ending with Dean's descent into Hell, she didn't even pull it off of the shelf. She knew what happened that night. She didn't care to think about it.

And then her hand brushed against a bundle of papers, unbound, held together by clips.

She pulled it out. It was a manuscript, an unpublished manuscript, again by Carver Edlund, the author of all the other books.

It was titled _Swan Song_, and the date on the manuscript was 2010.

The year that the boys were living now. The year she'd asked to be brought to. So this one, Martha opened. This one, she read.

And when she was done, she sat in the chair and waited for the Doctor to explain to her why they hadn't fixed this yet.

And now she still sat in that chair, knees pulled up to her chin, her stomach aching as she kept in the sobs that threatened to overtake her. The Doctor was, mercifully, not saying anything, just letting her try to process everything. His hand was still on her arm. It was too cold.

Dean's hands were always warm.

"It's the end of the world, Doctor," Martha whispered. "We can't stop the end of the world?"

He still said nothing.

"It's the Devil himself, it's the bloody end of days, and now of _all times_ you can't do anything?" she continued, her voice rising in agitation. "Satan is going to possess Sam Winchester and destroy the world, and _now_ we're helpless?"

"Martha."

"No, Doctor, I can't do this!" She stood up from her chair and began to walk, quickly but aimlessly, around the library. "There must be something. Something we haven't thought of. Something left to do."

"Martha."

"You told me the human race spreads out to the stars," she said accusingly, glaring at him. "How, if Lucifer destroys everything?"

"Martha, I don't understand this either. All I know is that I can't touch this moment. Do you think I didn't try?"

The heat in the Doctor's voice stopped her, and she stared at him. "I tried to talk to them about it," he said. "I've had this book for years. It's the only copy—never published. But each time I tried to talk to them, each time I brought it up, time would loop back and they wouldn't remember a thing. It _rejected_ me, Martha. Every time I tried." He lowered his eyes, and Martha was pretty sure she saw the sheen of tears. "There's literally nothing I can do. I can't even advise them. It's fixed in a way I've never seen before, inextricably woven into the fabric of Time itself, and I can't do _anything_."

Well.

If that was it, that was it. Martha didn't pretend to understand time travel like the Doctor did. If there was nothing she could do to change it, then, all right.

"Take me there," she said.

The Doctor startled. "What?"

"Take me to Stull Cemetery. Take me there. If I can't do anything about it I want to be with him when it happens."

"You don't..." The Doctor hesitated. "You don't want me to take you back to the last time you saw him? You don't want more time with him?"

Martha bit her lip, but she knew her answer. According to the book, between the last time she'd seen Dean and the end of the world, she had five days.

But. "I can't," she whispered, and the Doctor nodded. "If I go back I'll tell him. If I go back it'll just be good-bye, anyway. Please. Just take me there."

And stunningly, the Doctor didn't argue, but put his arm around her shoulders and led her into the console room. She watched as he solemnly inputted the coordinates, then turned to face her before he pulled the lever.

"I hope you understand one day," he said quietly, and set them in motion.

The TARDIS shrieked like an animal in pain, and Martha cried out as she lost her balance and had to grip onto the railing to prevent herself being thrown across the room. The Doctor maintained his footing, gripping the console with white-knuckled hands and staring grimly at the read-outs.

The TARDIS shuddered to a halt, still making those awful noises, and Martha threw herself at the door, shoving it open.

"I'm not talking to you," Dean was saying to what Martha knew was Lucifer in Sam's body. "I'm talking to Sam."

Martha inhaled to shout at him, but then the door slammed on her face and the TARDIS rocked again.

"Doctor!" she cried, pulling herself up the walkway by the railing. "Bring me back!"

The Doctor said nothing, but obediently inputted the coordinates again.

And Martha threw the door open to the sight of Lucifer and Michael speaking.

"Nobody makes Dad do anything," Lucifer was saying out of Sam's mouth.

And the door slammed on Martha.

"You're no longer the vessel, Dean," Michael-in-Adam (the half-brother Martha had only met once, only gotten to talk to once, and it was such a brief conversation) said the next time Martha opened the door. "You got no right to be here."

Before the door slammed Martha could see Dean's face screw up in grief.

She fell to her knees on the console once the TARDIS had stopped spasming, and the Doctor met her. "Why won't it let us stay?" she whispered.

"Because we would set an inflexible moment in flux," the Doctor explained gently. "Time is telling us to leave it alone. We've no place in that moment. The decision isn't mine to make, Martha. It's not my story."

She felt a hot tear roll down her cheek and couldn't even find the energy to be ashamed. "I thought it might be mine," she said, and began to weep.

The Doctor held her until she could control herself again, when she whispered into his ear: "Try one more time. Please, Doctor. Just one more time."

The Doctor pulled back, looking at her carefully, and then nodded. "I'm so sorry I couldn't do more," he said softly, before rising and putting the coordinates in one last time.

And this time, the TARDIS shook slightly, but landed like she ought to. Martha approached the door with caution, opening it slowly and stepping outside before it could take her away. Before it could deny her the right to at least bear witness to this.

And she saw Sam's body towering over Dean's bloodied form, but this time, she saw _Sam_. She heard him murmur, "It's okay, Dean. It's gonna be okay. I've got him."

She saw him throw the Horsemen's rings onto the ground and say something in a language she'd never heard before, and she saw the ground open.

She didn't hear herself scream as he threw himself into the chasm, but she felt it, just as she felt the Doctor pull on her arm, holding her back, keeping her away.

She felt herself fall to her knees, felt the sobs wracking her body, but all as though it were happening to somebody else. She could barely see through through her tears when she looked up as a shadow fell over her, but she was able to make out Castiel's form. He said something to the Doctor, who nodded, and together they brought Martha back into the TARDIS. Then he left—Martha hoped desperately that he left to go take care of Dean—and Martha was alone with the Doctor.

The Doctor flew the TARDIS somewhere else, Martha didn't know, didn't care, couldn't fathom caring. Once they'd landed he sat with her again, not touching her, just waiting.

Finally she whispered, "They did it, though."

"They did," the Doctor agreed.

"They saved the world," she choked out.

"Yes, they did."

"They changed time. _That's_ why we couldn't go." She hesitated. "Right? Not because it was fixed, but because it was in flux anyway. Because they changed a fixed point in time."

"It shouldn't be possible," the Doctor said, and Martha heard the wonder in his voice, "but they did. They averted the Apocalypse. They changed a fixed point."

"Will the ending of the book be different, if I go and look at it now?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded, smiling faintly. "The ending of the book will be what you just saw," he said. "Because they wrote it."

"In blood," she murmured, and then the Doctor did hold her, and she cried until she fell asleep on the floor of the console room.


	12. Revitalization

Author's Note: And we come to the end. I have never had a chapter fight so hard against being written. I'm not sure I'm 100% satisfied with it, but I think it brings things pretty full-circle, and there's even some resolution in what I'd originally written as the beginning of another story. I think this one deserves it, though. I hope you enjoy.

Additionally, this might be it for a little while in terms of this 'verse. I'm having a really hard time getting more stories out for it, and I'm a little immersed in one or two other projects, on top of my last semester of graduate school. I do think I'll come back to it, but it'll take longer for me to continue than it has in the past. If you have ideas for one-shots you'd like me to write in this 'verse, or just want to chat about SuperWho, please feel free to PM me. I'm quite friendly. :) Again, as always, thanks for your warm reception to my story. You guys are fab.

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Martha Jones.

She lived with her mother and father, her brother and her sister, in London, England, on the planet Earth. She was born in 1987. She went to school and made friends and learned things, and she decided that when she grew up, she was going to be a doctor. Martha loved to help people, and also she loved to know more than other people, so she wanted to go to school for a long time.

Everybody told Martha that she was smart and pretty, and she believed them. She was smart enough to know that both things were true, but she didn't let it get to her head. And she knew which one was more important. Martha filled her head with as much knowledge as she could, but it was never enough. She knew there was always more to know, and she wanted to know all of it. It was never, ever enough.

Then, what with one thing leading to another, one of the world's commonest strange things happened: the girl called Martha Jones turned into a woman called Martha Jones, and that woman was a doctor, and she knew all sorts of things and she helped people every day.

And then that doctor called Martha Jones met a strange man called the Doctor.

The girl called Martha Jones always thought that one day she'd fall in love, although she didn't give it much thought. It was one of those things, she supposed, that just happened. Not like becoming a doctor. That took all her effort. Falling in love, she thought, would happen to her when it was time.

She thought it happened when she met the Doctor.

But she was wrong.

The woman called Martha Jones met a man called Dean Winchester, and just like she'd thought when she was a girl, falling in love just happened. It didn't happen on purpose, and it didn't happen all at once, but slowly she realized, it had happened.

It was only after that that the story of the woman called Martha Jones got very, very strange, kind of wonderful, and perhaps more than a little sad.

The girl called Martha Jones never thought she'd be sitting on the floor of a time machine with a very strange man called the Doctor, pulling herself together after watching helplessly as the brother of the man she loved sacrificed himself to save the world. She never thought she'd sniff and try to smile as the man handed her a kerchief that she'd bought on a planet about seven light-years past Betelgeuse because it was softer than the fabrics she could find on Earth and also a lovely red. But that was precisely what happened to her.

It had been several hours since they'd left Stull Cemetery, and Martha felt that she had collected herself admirably. She knew several things.

She knew that there was nothing to be done about what had taken place.

She knew that Dean would need some time to recover, and that she wouldn't want to face him right away, having to explain why they couldn't do anything to save Sam.

She knew that she couldn't stay away; not forever.

So she turned to the Doctor, who was sitting next to her. She said, in a voice that was quiet but, to her edification, steady, "I want to go to him."

He tried to speak and she interrupted, saying, "Not now. In his future. But not far. You understand? Long enough for him to...have his time. But not so long that he thinks I've abandoned him."

A moment passed, and she added, "Please."

The Doctor squeezed her shoulder once, smiling sadly, stood up, and walked to the console, inputting coordinates. Martha stayed on the floor, close enough to a railing to grip. She heard the tinkering sounds of the Doctor setting course, and closed her eyes, closing her fist around the metal bar.

She willed Dean to be strong, to be brave, to heal.

_anti-inflammatories and field sutures aren't exactly my idea of an ideal date_

In the beginning she'd been his Florence Nightingale. But now it wasn't enough, now she couldn't stitch together these wounds, and she knew it, and he'd know it, too.

_he's not as strong as he looks_

Martha knew Sam was right when he'd said that, but at the same time, he was wrong. Dean was _precisely_ as strong as he looked, and when he couldn't keep his façade up in front of the people he'd decided he had a responsibility to keep safe...that's when it started to crumble for him.

She wouldn't make him face that. She'd let him tend to the wounds she couldn't care for in private, and she'd return when he was prepared to be the man he wanted to be in front of her.

The TARDIS jolted and rocked and Martha cried out, gripping the railing tighter as the Doctor shouted "Hold on!"

When she settled, Martha stood unsteadily, stumbling to the console and staring at the read-outs she couldn't decipher. "Are we there?" she asked, and the Doctor, disheveled, glared at his screen.

"We ought to be, but there was some sort of fluctuation, I don't—"

Martha didn't wait for the rest, flinging herself out the door and stopping just beyond the threshold of the TARDIS.

Several yards further was Sam Winchester. The same Sam Winchester she'd seen throw himself into the pits of Hell not three hours earlier.

Just beyond him was Dean, holding what looked like a long bone over a man she didn't recognize, and Castiel behind the man, restraining him.

Martha couldn't breathe to cry out for him before Dean plunged the bone into the man's neck.

She felt a hand around her wrist as Dean said something too low for her to hear, the man's face exploded into something horrible, and then at the very last moment before the explosion, Dean's eyes lifted and met hers.

She whispered "_Dean_" and his lips pressed together in the beginning of an _M_ and the creature in front of him exploded.

It wasn't until the doors to the TARDIS closed, until she was on her back inside the time machine with the Doctor worrying over her, that she realized she'd been brought too far.

She'd been brought too far ahead, and now she'd been written into Dean's timeline—into _their_ timeline—and she couldn't cross it. She couldn't go any further back, because now...now Dean didn't see Martha Jones after Stull Cemetery until this moment.

It wasn't until she stepped off of the _Valiant_ in May of 2008 that she truly understood what that meant.

The girl called Martha Jones didn't grow up to live a fairytale, much as she thought she would when she was a child. But the woman called Martha Jones thought that just maybe, if she fought hard enough, she could earn something almost as good.

* * *

_Epilogue_

Martha's knuckles hovered over the door for a moment. Another motel room, of course. Always another motel room. But somehow it managed to feel like coming home anyway, and she wasn't sure how.

It felt like coming home, but she wasn't sure if she'd be allowed to stay. It had been a long time, after all. For all of them. And she was so different.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so she rapped quietly on the door, because she didn't want to wake Dean if he was sleeping. Not that she supposed he probably was—not after what he'd been through, what he'd just escaped from.

_Escaped from_. The thought brought a smile unbidden to Martha's lips. Dean had escaped. All those months she spent looking for a solution, countless sleepless nights and a brand new caffeine addiction and a new prescription for reading glasses because she'd pored over one too many ancient texts at three o'clock in the morning, all the memos from UNIT reading _No UNIT employees may collect overtime for researching ways to rescue their significant others even if they are using UNIT resources to do so, _and it didn't matter that she wasn't the one who'd found a way to bring him back. Ultimately, she didn't care who or what it was that had brought him back. Dean was back, safe, alive.

And maybe opening the door. Martha took a step back, realizing that if it was Dean at the door he could be armed, and held her breath.

"Hello?"

The young man at the door was _definitely_ not Dean, and he wasn't Sam, either. He was, for one thing, a normal height—even a little short for a man. His hands were trembling lightly, and one was behind the door. She could tell from his stance that he had a weapon in that hidden hand. He was very young, Asian, and looked scared to death.

"Um," she said. "Sorry, I, ah, seem to have the wrong room. Must've misheard." But she hadn't, she knew that, and if the Winchesters weren't here, she didn't know where they were. How had she missed them? Already missed them?

She smiled apologetically and turned to go, but the young man said, "Wait! Who, um, who are you looking for?"

Martha stopped, putting her hands in her pockets and regarding him. "A friend," she replied. "But I'm pretty sure...I mean, obviously, we don't know each other, and—"

"You're Martha, aren't you?" he asked, and she shut up immediately. "I mean, Martha Jones? That's you, isn't it?" When she just gaped at him instead of answering, he pulled something out of his pocket, glanced at it, and handed it to her sheepishly. "Sam, uh, he gave this to me."

"Sam—he gave—" Martha stammered, taking the paper and smoothing it out between her hands.

Oh.

Her hands trembled as she held the picture. It was taken at the Pyramids of Giza right after their construction had been completed, and Sam looked like a kid in a candy store, and the Doctor had this ridiculous grin on his face, and Dean's arm was around Martha as she leaned her head on his chest and gave the camera a peace sign. Castiel was in the background, looking unimpressed, and Bobby had taken the picture, much to the confusion of a couple of locals.

They all looked so _happy_.

But more pressingly, "Sam gave you this? Sam..."

The young man swallowed hard, as though he wasn't sure he should give her Sam's last name, but eventually confessed, "Winchester. Sam—god, I hope you're the right person."

"I am," she said softly. "Where is he?"

"Sam went to pick up some dinner," he said.

"And where's—" Her voice caught, but only a little bit, really, and it was probably just because she was exhausted from the red-eye that brought her here from England, "—where's Dean?"

"Sleeping," the young man replied. Then he stuck out his hand. "I'm Kevin Tran. Prophet."

"Martha Jones," she said, taking his hand and shaking it. "Um, UNIT. Nice to meet you, Kevin. Probably ought to say sorry you ended up with these boys, though."

Kevin shrugged, smiling a little, although there was a tinge of bitterness to the expression. "Yeah. Well, things happen, and they did save my life a couple of times."

"They have a habit of doing that," Martha agreed, and allowed Kevin to usher her in. She dropped her single bag at the door and took in the dingy motel. "Ah, just like old times. Smells like mold and an unnerving quantity of fabric cleaner."

There was a kind of odd noise from Kevin as he said, sounding surprised, "Yeah. That's, like, exactly what it smells like."

Martha laughed softly and collapsed onto the couch, scooting over a bit when Kevin came to join her. "Sam says you traveled with them for a while," he said, without preamble.

Martha blinked. "I suppose you could say that," she replied. "Listen, do you think that—"

"Martha?"

She froze for just a moment, savoring this, savoring the sound of that voice, the way it made her name sound so gentle despite the rough gravel of it. Eventually, she turned around.

God, he looked awful.

God, he looked beautiful.

She stood slowly, walked carefully up to him, not sure how the time had changed him...not sure how much time it had even been for him. But he didn't shy away from her, just stared like he'd never look away, and finally she was right up in front of him.

She raised a shaking hand to his face and he didn't pull away. Didn't lean into her touch, but didn't pull away.

"Welcome back," she whispered.

He gently grasped the back of her neck, slid his hand up into her hair, and lowered his forehead against hers. She could feel him tremble, but that was only fair; he could surely feel her tremble, too.

And for a moment...just a moment...it was all right.

It wouldn't stay all right. She knew that. She had explaining to do, forgiveness to seek, and they both had a lot of wounds to heal.

But for a moment, everything was fine.

And Martha would live in that moment as long as she was allowed.


End file.
